


Piasa

by stefrobrts



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Case Fic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-01
Updated: 2015-11-01
Packaged: 2018-04-29 07:19:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5119844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stefrobrts/pseuds/stefrobrts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After a young boy disappears while hiking with his father in a newly developed state park, Mulder and Scully are asked to take a short detour to assist with the search and rescue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Piasa

**Author's Note:**

> This is a short story, which I wrote for a friend who lives near the Piasa Bird in Alton, IL, USA. 
> 
> This could go anywhere in the timeline, and there are no spoilers. Enjoy, give feedback if you feel moved, and I will have several more stories to share in the future. Thanks for reading!

Prologue  
\--------  
  
"So what's that?" The little boy hitched his backpack up a little higher on his shoulders and pointed at a flower along the side of the trail.  
  
"That's a vinca, Mark, it's purple and yellow, and..."  
  
"What's that?" He pointed at a small red flower growing close to the ground.  
  
"Uh," Tom hesitated for a second. "That's a red popper, they..."  
  
"What's that?" He pointed at a bird high in the trees above.  
  
"That's a crow. Come on, you knew that. We've got them at home..."  
  
"What's that?" He pointed somewhere else, this time his father didn't even notice where.  
  
"Enough questions, you're full of them today, aren't you?" He laid a hand on the little boy's head with a smile, just at waist level to him. "Better keep moving or we'll be late getting home. Mom won't like it if we're late."  
  
They had spent a pleasant day fishing at the lake. They had hiked in the night before, spent the night in a tent on the lake shore, and gotten up at the crack of dawn to catch some trout for breakfast. He had cooked them over the campfire while little Mark gathered twigs and added them to the fire. He had been waiting for what seemed like an eternity, though it was really only seven years, for his boy to be big enough to go on an adventure like this with his old man. Suddenly all that diaper changing and two-am feedings seemed to have been worth the price. His baby boy had finally grown up into a little boy who he could take out and be a little boy with again himself.  
  
"Dad, I need to go to the bathroom."  
  
"Ok, just go in the bushes here."  
  
"I don't want you to watch," he whined, as if this should have been perfectly clear to his father already. "Number two," he added, sheepishly.  
  
"Ok, ok," Tom helped him take off his little backpack so he wouldn't fall over while squatting. "I'll wait here, you just walk into the bushes a few feet and do your business."  
  
"Ok, but don't watch," Mark added sternly.  
  
"I won't, I promise." Tom stood and looked at his shoes, stared off across the trail and occasionally glanced back to where the bushes were shaking back and forth in the direction his son had gone.  
  
"How are you doing?" The bushes had stopped shaking.  
  
"Don't look!" Came the response.  
  
"I'm not!" He called back. He stared at the ground again, kicked at the dirt with his boot heel. Then he stopped, listening. Something had changed. The forest had fallen quiet.  
  
"Done yet?" He called out. There was no answer for a second.  
  
"Daddy, what's that?"  
  
He looked into the bushes but his son was too far in to spot through the cover of brush. "What? Where?"  
  
"There. There! Daddy, what is it?" His little voice got more excited. Excited or scared. Tom dropped the pack and took a few steps in to the brush. As soon as he did a whistling sound assaulted him. He grabbed a small tree next to him as a wind suddenly kicked up. Dirt and pebbles pounded his face and he threw an arm across his eyes to protect them.  
  
"Mark! Mark!" He struggled a few more steps into the wind, but the pounding of debris continued, forcing him backwards. Finally he fell, and was pushed back onto the trail, brush and limbs falling over him. Then the woods fell silent.  
  
Tom struggled to his feet, pushing off the brush which had covered him and taking a step forward. The woods were gone. In their place was a clearing, where the sun shone through the newly opened gap in the trees to illuminate the bare ground, turned over into mightly troughs of fresh dirt. Around the edge of the clearing lay all the brush and trees which had grown there only a moment before, turned over into a tumble of branches and roots. He climbed into the clearing and looked around helplessly at the devastation around him.  
  
"Mark?!"  
  
  
  
Chapter 1  
\---------  
  
"Yes, Sir. Yes, I understand. Alright, we'll be over there as soon as possible." Scully nodded as she spoke into her cellphone. She quickly scribbled a note on the hotel notepad as she spoke, occasionally sparing a glance towards Mulder, who stood with one hand on the doorknob, her suitcase in his hand.  
  
"What, what?" He asked quietly, not sure if he should put the bag down or take it out to the car, as he had been in the process of doing when her phone rang.  
  
"Go ahead", she mouthed silently, waving a hand at him. As he walked out to the rental car he heard a couple more "Yes, Sir"s from her. He stowed the suitcase in the trunk, then took off his long coat and threw it in the trunk as well before slamming the lid shut. It was looking like it might be a hot day after the morning clouds burned off. Returning to the hotel room, he almost bumped into his partner in the doorway as she hurried out to meet him.  
  
"Its a missing person case, Skinner wants us to assist." She pushed past and headed for the passenger side of the car. By the time he got in and buckled up she had a map out and was comparing it to her notes from the phone. "A small boy was lost in the woods near a new state park that's being built just north of here. It's the third disappearance in two weeks in the same area and the local police asked for assistance from the FBI."  
  
"So why are we being called in on this?" Mulder asked, none too excited about the side trip. After almost a week in a small farm town inspecting a series of cattle mutilations, Mulder was more than ready to return to Washington. He could go the rest of his life without ever seeing the inside of a cow again.  
  
On the other hand, the mutilated bovine carcasses had provided an interesting puzzle for Scully, who had spent most of her time doing painstakingly detailed cow autopsies, and seemed delighted to be doing so. Her carefully gathered evidence had led them to a prankster who thought the tabloid shows would pay more for his UFO story if there were some cattle mutilations to go with them. He had done a good job, good enough to get Mulder's hopes up, but certainly not good enough to fool Mulder's determined partner. His disappointment in NOT getting his hands on authentic mutilation evidence was tempered by the humiliation he would have felt if he'd fallen for the hoax, and a bittersweet sense of pride that he had a partner sharp enough to have saved him from his own enthusiasm yet again.  
  
"Because we were close. Skinner says a couple FBI teams from Chicago are coming as well, but they won't be out here until late this afternoon. He wanted us to fill in until they arrive. It's only an hour drive from here. Just get on the highway and keep going north." She spread the map out on her lap and examined the area. "It's a small town called River Bend. It's right on the river,"  
  
"Big surprise," Mulder mumbled. She ignored him and continued.  
  
"It looks like it backs onto some thickly wooded country. Hardly any roads. The state is working on building a new park in the area, and they've been clearing land for the parking lots and maintenance buildings. The boy was camping there with his father. The men who dissapeared last week were working on a crew clearing trees."  
  
"So we've got a couple people lost in the woods. It sounds like a job for search and rescue."  
  
"Search and rescue teams are already there, but they haven't found anything concrete yet. They did find some ground disturbed, but they can't identify the tracks or make any sense of it, so they want us to come help." She paused and carefully folded the map so the area they were going to was on the outside. "Is there a problem, Mulder?"  
  
"No."  
  
She sat there for a long minute staring out the window as the highway flew by.  
  
"You're still annoyed about the cattle thing, aren't you?"  
  
  
  
Chapter 2  
\---------  
  
Mulder pulled the car into the clearing and parked near the other vehicles. The ground was studded with stumps, and tall trees had been felled and piled off to one side. A large tent was the makeshift headquarters for the search and rescue team, and a small crowd of people were milling around outside the tent, smoking and talking animatedly.  
  
"Agent Mulder, FBI. Who's in charge here?" He held his badge out to the first person he encountered, and the man looked at him blankly for a moment before wordlessly pointing him towards the tent.  
  
Leading the way, Scully pushed her way through the crowd and into the tent. Inside a couple men were manning radio sets, taking notes and marking up the detailed topographical maps on the table in front of them. One scribbled a note and handed it to another man who stood nearby. He looked at it for a moment before pushing past them and stepping out of the tent.  
  
"Ok, who wants to go check this one out? Two miles up the canyon," He said loudly. Two men immediately came to him and began discussing the search.  
  
A short, stocky man, with a thick beard, and an attitude that implied he had spent his whole life in the woods, stuck out his hand in greeting. "I'm John Kinney, county search and rescue. I'm in charge of this operation. How can I help you?"  
  
"I'm Agent Scully, this is Agent Mulder, FBI. We're here to assist until reinforcements arrive this evening."  
  
"Good. I've been asking everyone I can to send help out here. We have a lot of ground to cover and not a lot of time. Little kids don't last long in the woods alone, and we're supposed to get a cold rain tonight. We have a helicopter in the air searching for anything that looks suspicious. If they see anything they radio it back here, and we send a team out to check it out."  
  
"It looks like you have quite a few men here," Mulder said, gesturing towards the men standing outside the door of the tent.  
  
"Not really. Those guys have been out here all week since the work crew disappeared. They're exhausted and need to be relieved. I'll send a few of them home now that you're here. The rest can leave when the other agents arrive."  
  
"So who exactly are we looking for?" Scully asked.  
  
"Mark is an eight year old boy, disappeared while hiking out with his Dad after an overnighter."  
  
"Is the father a suspect?"  
  
"No, no, not at all," he put up his hands as if to ward off that line of questioning. "He's been very cooperative, and is actually out searching with one of my teams."  
  
"Well, what can we help you with?" Scully asked.  
  
"I guess we just need more searchers on the ground. My men are getting tired, and I have replacements coming but not fast enough."  
  
Mulder nodded "You've got us, just let us know where to go."  
  
"There's another thing. We've found a number of areas where the ground is heavily disturbed. We have been targeting these areas because Mark's dad, Tom, said he saw one of these clearings appear, as if a tornado had touched down. Now we have not had any reports of tornadoes, but the damage in these spots is impressive. Bushes are torn clear out of the ground and thrown in piles. The ground is torn up and trenches were dug, but nothing was buried that we can find. We're finding a lot of really strange stuff, but not a single footprint or a shred of evidence we can use. Frankly, people are getting a little wary about being out there at all."  
  
Mulder's eyes nearly lit up at his description.

  
chapter 3  
\---------  
  
Over the next few hours the helicopters radioed in with sites that needed to be checked out on foot, until all the men outside the tent were gone. Mulder and Scully had changed into clothing more appropriate for wandering in the woods, the same clothes they had been wandering through cow fields in just a couple days before. while they waited they spent their time going over a file of information concerning the history of the area, the topography, and the missing person's descriptions. They were ready when the next call came in.  
  
"Ok, the helicopter has pinpointed a site on the south end of the canyon with quite a bit of ground destruction. It's right at the foot of a cliff, and there are a lot of caves in the area too. Are you two ready to come with me to check it out?" John grabbed three sets of helmets with built-in radios and miners lights strapped to them and handed them to the two agents, keeping one for himself.  
  
"This should keep us all in touch. I don't want to lose any of our rescuers. We talk on a different channel than the choppers, so Ron here monitors us and the rest of the searchers and calls for help if any of us need it. Ok?"  
  
They piled into a green forest service pickup and headed out. Scully watched out the windows as they left the main road and began picking their way over a rough dirt road. It took a good  half hour of bumping along to get to the area the helicopter had spotted from above.  
  
They stepped out of the truck and took a few steps through the brush alongside the road which led them to a clearing. Suddenly, Mulder was speechless. The destruction was greater than he had expected, certainly greater than any man could have performed to hide his tracks. It would have taken heavy machinery to do this. Bushes were torn up and thrown on top of other bushes, their dirty white roots ripped from the soil and left grasping at the air. Small, thin trees were snapped in half. All around them the ground was turned over in deep furrows, like a giant roto-tiller had struck and then disappeared.  
  
"Mulder, look at that," Scully said, standing next to him and looking up. He forced his gaze away from the wholesale destruction of the land around him and looked up at the stark white limestone cliff that rose up from the canyon floor. Several hundred feet up was a giant picture carved into the stone, stretching easily a hundred feet along the wall, depicting some kind of winged dragon.  
  
"What is that?" Mulder asked. John stopped and looked up for a moment.  
  
"It's an indian petrograph. They call it a Piasa Bird. There are images like that carved here and there along the river. Several of them are Piasa." John continued walking. "In the native language, it means 'The Bird Who Devours Men'." Mulder stopped in his tracks.  
  
"We just uncovered this one when we started clearing trails and roads for the park." He turned and started picking his way over the torn up ground looking for any sign of life. Scully followed him. Mulder still stood staring, entranced, at the image.  
  
"Someone could be buried under all this," Scully said, standing at the edge of the destruction and looking for footprints in the soft dirt. She couldn't find any.  
  
"We dug up the first couple places we found like this last week but never found anything." John stepped into the soft dirt, prodding at it with his hiking stick. "The earth is turned over, but as far as we can tell, nothing's buried here. Someone suggested they've seen bears dig up large areas looking for groundhogs or prairie dogs to eat. Maybe it was bears." John climbed onto a large boulder and blew a whistle three times. Between each blast he paused, listening as the sound bounced off the walls of the canyon and faded into nothingness. On the third blast they got lucky. A tiny voice cried out, too faint to make out words, but it was definitely a call for help. John reached up and pushed a button on his helmet to activate the microphone.  
  
"Ron, we heard a response to the whistle! Is anyone else close to us?" There was a pause and John nodded and smiled after a moment. "Great, well get them over here then, I think we have a contact, now we just have to find him."  
  
  
Chapter 4  
\---------  
  
By the time the rest of the search and rescue teams rolled into the clearing, Mulder and Scully had already started searching. Connected by radio to the base, the search leader felt safe to let them go off together, as long as everyone worked in teams and everyone stayed in radio contact. Mulder had immediately zerod in on a cave high up on the cliff wall below the bird painting. A narrow ledge on the cliff face climbed steeply up to it.  
  
Scully picked her way up a thin trail that led up the face of the cliff. Knee to waist high brambles snagged at her pantlegs as they climbed. Mulder followed along behind, stopping to scan the area below for life.  
  
Stepping carefully over mossy clumps and twigs scattered thickly over the path, they approached the cave which was situated just a few feet above the level of the thin ledge they had followed up the rock wall. Scully looked down with apprehension at the ground below, now a good hundred feet below them. It was a sheer drop, with nothing to grab onto if one were to slip off the edge. Mulder was tall enough to look over the ledge of the cave entrance, and then grabbed the edge, pulling himself up into it, his feet scrambling against the cliff wall.  
  
"What do you see?" Scully asked from the path.  
  
Mulder stood up and brushed his pants off. He flipped on his helmet light and turned on his flashlight, whipping it around the cave, hoping he wouldn't be disturbing any bears, at least not any bears big enough to have caused the damage they saw on the ground below.  
  
"It looks empty in here." He turned around and lay on the floor of the cave to reach down and help her up. His helmet lamp shined in her eyes, but she squinted past it, grabbed his hand and allowed him to yank her up onto the ledge.  
  
"I don't know, Mulder," she said, standing up and looking around the cave. The entryway of the cave was empty except for more twigs and moss, same as had been littered all over the path. The back of the cave disappeared off into darkness. "I can't imagine anyone hiding in here. The little boy couldn't even reach this high to climb in here."  
  
"Maybe there's another entrance?" He took a few steps further into the cave. His headlamp played across pale stalactites that hung down from the ceiling, and matching stalagmites that reached up form the floor. "These caves are formed through water erosion," he reached out and caught a drop of water as it fell from one of the ceiling formations.  
  
"That doesn't make me feel very secure in their stability," Scully looked around cautiously.  
  
"Hello?" Mulder shouted into the darkness. His voice echoed around for what seemed like a long time. A distant voice answered, still too faint to be clearly heard. "Did you hear it?"  
  
"I don't know, Mulder," her voice betrayed her concern. "It could have been deep in the cave or out in the woods." She stood in the entryway of the cave and looked down at the other rescuers still combing the area below.  
  
"Come on, Scully. We'll just follow the path a little ways. If the voice doesn't get closer, we'll go back down." He started following the path towards the back of the cave. His headlight beam bounced off the walls as he looked around. Scully sighed, radioed John with a quick update of their location and followed Mulder into the cave.  
  
"What do you think about all this debris on the floor?" Scully asked, stepping over more clumps of twigs and moss.  
  
"I don't know. Birds, bats, rats, take your pick. Looks like something's been building a nest." Mulder followed the main chamber of the cave back into the darkness until it had narrowed to a small corridor. Scully followed behind, flashing her light around as she went. She nearly ran into Mulder, who had stopped and was staring at the wall.  
  
"What is it," Scully stopped beside him. Outlines of hands, crescent moons, and animal shapes covered the dark stone of the wall. One scene stood out. It showed the stick figure of a man standing in a circle, perhaps a clearing, about to be picked up by a monstrous giant stick-bird. Other stick-men stood around the perimeter of the circle. The picture was drawn crudely in white chalk which nearly glowed in the dim light.  
  
"I wonder how long this has been here?" Mulder asked. He rubbed his finger over one line and looked to see if any of the chalk rubbed off. It didn't.  
  
"It could be hundreds of years old, Mulder. We're a long ways from the main roads. These caves have probably been undisturbed for a long time."  
  
"What do you think about this bird-like creature?" He asked quietly, his head spinning with possibilities. Scully took a deep, thoughtful breath.  
  
"Many native american dieties took animal form. Maybe they worshiped it."  
  
"Or maybe it lives here, and this is our last warning." Mulder answered, looking down the corridor to where his flashlight beam disappeared into the darkness.  
  
  
Chapter 5  
\---------  
  
A hundred yards further and the cave corridor took a sharp turn to the left. It had been curving here and there already, so the comfort of the light at the entrance of the tunnel had already disappeared far behind them. The floor was smooth and worn, and Scully wondered at the kind of geological forces that had formed it. Was it a lava tube from an eruption a millennia ago, or had water slowly carved out this path through the rock? Her helmet hit a low rock outcropping on the ceiling and jarred her back to reality.  
  
"Did you hear that?" Mulder said, stopping, his hand out to block her path.  
  
"I didn't hear anything but my head hitting the ceiling."  
  
"I thought I heard a voice."  
  
They stood perfectly still, listening. Scully shifted her weight and heard the dry straw crunch under her feet, but nothing else. Then she heard it, a tiny sound, like a child talking, coming from far down the cave. The sound floated on the breeze and stopped after a moment.  
  
"I don't know, Mulder, it sounds farther away than when we started." She looked at him, but as soon as he turned to face her all she could see was the blinding helmet lantern shining in her eyes. They both tilted their heads up enough to talk without blinding each other.  
  
"But it still sounds like it's further into the cave. Let's go in a little deeper. I think the sound is just echoing around."  
  
"Ok, lets go another hundred yards or so, but if we don't see anything by then we'll turn around and come back out."  
  
"Deal."  
  
Mulder led the way further down the corridor. The path widened and then thinned down, at one point being so narrow that each of them had to squeeze through sideways, one at a time. The corridor opened up into a chamber, and they stopped again, listening.  
  
"Running water, can you hear that?" Mulder said. He walked around the chamber, flashing his light along the walls and searching for the source of the sound.  
  
"Yeah, have we been going downhill? Maybe we're close to the river. Or at least we're at the water table level." Scully flashed her light up. The chamber seemed to be at least thirty feet high.  
  
Leading out of the chamber was a wide corridor and a tiny hole which was so small only one person could crawl through it at a time. Mulder, naturally, picked the small hole. He got down on his knees and looked into it with his flashlight, and then began crawling in.  
  
"Mulder, I'm not going in there," she warned him. "I don't think you should either. Let's follow the other path."  
  
"Trust me, Scully. If you were a little boy, you'd take this route. Don't worry. I'll only go a few feet. Then I'll back right out." His voice already sounded hollow and far away, even though she could still see his light. She sat down on the cold stone outside the hole and switched off her headlight and flashlight and waited.  
  
The cave was cold, and the darkness in the chamber was overwhelming. She could still occasionally see of ray of light from the hole Mulder had crawled through, and could hear him scraping and clawing his way along. Occasionally she heard the plastic thunk of his helmet hitting the rock ceiling, but in between these noises, the silence was so loud it made her ears ring. The sensory deprivation grew old quickly, and she turned her lights back on for security.  
  
Then she heard a loud crash and the sound of rock falling down, as the floor under her shook with an ominous rumbling. Faster than she knew she could move she was on her hands and knees in front of the small hole.  
  
"Mulder?" She called, breathless with fear.  
  
Only a plume of dust sifted out in answer to her calls.  
  
"Mulder!"  
  
  
Chapter 6  
\---------  
  
Mulder had been crawling along the small tunnel. It amazed him that the air seemed fresher here. It reminded him of cool running water, or a breezy fall day. The air was was cold and dry, not stuffy and still like the air in the main chamber of the cave had been. Water droplets dripped from the ceiling of the tunnel, leaving cool, damp spots on his shirt and trickling over his bare neck.  
  
He was crawling along on his hands and knees, bumping his head into the ceiling when he tried to look up to see where he was going. He found if he lowered his body, then he could look up, but he couldn't crawl for long that way, so he'd lift back up and crawl a few yards looking down, and then hunker down and look ahead again.  
  
He quickly forgot about his partner waiting for him in the main chamber, and his promise that he wouldn't go far. He had covered thirty yards or more when he put his hand down on a spongy spot on the floor. In the time it took for his brain to register that there shouldn't be any spongy spots on a rock floor in a cave, he suddenly became aware of both the vulnerability of his position, and the forces that provide for our constantly changing landscape. Over time, even stone could be worn away by a drop of water. Mulder barely had time to think about it as the tunnel collapsed under him and he fell into the darkness.

  
Chapter 7  
\---------  
  
"Mulder! Mulder! Answer me!" Scully shone her light into the tunnel, but couldn't see anything. The dust had settled, and the tunnel curved away into the distance. She pushed her comm button.  
  
"John, can you hear me? We're in the cave and there's been a collapse." She waited for a second but heard nothing but the empty hiss of her headset. "John, respond if you can hear me." Her finger slipped off the com button with a click. After a moment she resigned herself to the fact that there would be no response. She was utterly alone.  
  
She knew the right thing to do would be to run back for help and come back and find Mulder. Going into a dangerous and unstable situation alone could mean the loss of both agents. It was always better to call for back up first, if at all possible. She kneeled down and looked into the tunnel.  
  
"Mulder?"  
  
The thought of him laying bleeding to death or buried, suffocating under rocks and debris while she ran for help chilled her. They had been making good time, and had probably been in the cave for a half hour or more. That could mean an hour before she could get help and get them back here, longer if she took a wrong turn. She took one more look back at the way they had come, but knew she couldn't waste time with that. They had come together, and they would be leaving together, however that happened to work out. With a little grumble of protest under her breath, she dropped to her knees and started crawling into the tiny tunnel.  
  
  
Chapter 8  
\---------  
  
The world fell out from under Mulder in an instant. Rocks poured down around him, tumbling him until he landed on the rocky ground below. The rocks that had been under him beat him to the ground and he fell hard on them on his left side, their corners digging deep into his body and knocking the wind from his lungs. He coughed hard and gasped, instinctively sucking the air back in, wincing in pain as he did so. It was only once he had the essential act of breathing back under control that his mind began to work again.  
  
"Scully..." The words cracked out of his raw throat, so quiet and rough that he didn't recognize his own voice. He concentrated on opening his still watering eyes to survey the new situation.  
  
His head was still pressed flat against the rocks he had fallen on, and for an instant he felt panic begin to grip him as he realized he couldn't see. Complete darkness surrounded him, and he brushed his fingers against his eyes, feeling a slick wetness. He followed the trail to his forehead and felt the warm blood draining from a cut high above his left eye. Still, it didn't seem too serious. As his powers of reasoning began clicking again, he realized he had no flashlight, and his helmet was gone. He probably wasn't blind.  
  
He pressed his hands against the ground and immediately noticed that his landing, however rough, had been somewhat softened by a thick layer of straw that covered the floor of the cave. The extra padding had no doubt cushioned his fall. He pushed himself to his knees and sat up, his head spinning with the effort and giving him a light show of sorts to enjoy. When he felt his head settle down he brushed the dirty straw from his hands by wiping them on the front of his shirt, and then froze in mid-wipe.  
  
He sensed he wasn't alone.  
  
A low clicking sound reached his ears, almost like a cat's purr. The acoustics of the cave prevented him from determining where the sound emanated from. It echoed around him. He turned and looked around the cave, even though he couldn't see anything in the complete, utter darkness. When he turned to his right he heard a quick shuffling sound and something that sounded like the crisp rattle of feathers rustling. He imagined bony claws that scraped heavily across the ground, though he couldn't tell if it was towards or away from him. He heard a tiny, high pitched sound, like a child's voice far away, the words undecipherable. With a sinking feeling, Mulder realized that the voice they had been chasing all along wasn't coming from the missing child. Whatever made that sound was right here in the room with him.  
  
He groped the straw around him, hoping his hands would stray over his dropped flashlight or helmet in the darkness. His fingers clawed against rocks all around him, some of them smooth and large, but most of them small and sharp. He desperately hoped to feel the comforting metal of his flashlight, but found only stone and straw.  
  
The rattling rose and fell like a great animal breathing. Mulder listened to it, kneeling in the straw, his hands at his sides. It drew nearer, becoming louder. He sat perfectly still as he felt warm air blow gently against him, tickling across the back of his neck. Something brushed across the floor at the far end of the room. How many creatures were in this cave, or how big was the one near him? He desperately wished he could reach his flashlight.  
  
"Mulder?!" Scully's voice called out from what seemed like very far away. He could hear the concern in it and wanted to call back, but didn't want to move and startle whatever was in the room with him. He listened for her approach, thinking he would warn her off if she got too close. He'd rather take his chances with the beast than get her mixed up in this as well. Another part of him desperately wanted her to come find him and shine a light on the beast for them both to see.  
  
He sat as still as a statue, and the beast pushed past him, rubbing against his side as it did so. Wispy thin hairs or feathers brushed against the skin of his face and neck and he tried hard not to shiver as they tickled him. Without ever losing contact with him, he heard a wet, smacking sound, and a shuffling, and the creature pulled back in the direction it had come. Something cold and hard as bone rubbed against his face as it moved away, nearly knocking him over. There was a lot of shuffling and dragging and the sounds disappeared completely into the back of the room. It had left the room.  
  
"Scully! Be careful!" He called out, wincing a little at the fact that that was the only thing he could think of to say. Of course she was being careful. She was Scully. He was the one who had fallen down a hole.  
  
"Mulder, I'm coming, are you hurt?" Her voice was still far off, and he saw no sign of her flashlight beam yet.  
  
"Not bad, but I'm not alone. There's something down here."  
  
"What?" She asked, her voice echoing. He could still hear the concern in her voice, and now a slight apprehension.  
  
"I don't know, it's dark. Just be careful."  
  
He stared upwards into the darkness, waiting and wanting to see her light so badly he thought he could see it when it wasn't there. He rubbed his hands on his pantlegs in anticipation. In the back of the room he heard the shuffling, scraping sounds moving towards him again. He could have run, but in the complete darkness he wouldn't have been able to tell where he was going anyway. He couldn't decide if he should watch the ceiling or stare into the darkness, using his sense of hearing to determine what was going on around him.  
  
The sounds moved towards him again and stopped a short distance away. He listened to the rattling breath of the beast again. There was a burst of noise, feathers rubbing together as the creature shook itself. Mulder felt it nudge past him, brushing against his side again. He tentatively lifted his hand on the opposite side and reached over. What he touched felt like a thick wall of snakeskin, the scales of it hummed under his fingers as it moved. He moved his hand up and felt the snakeskin curve away until his fingers touched soft hair that ran along the top. He snatched his hand away as the creature started moving back again, pulling away from him.  
  
High above, Scully's flashlight beam finally began to light the hole in the ceiling, casting a blue haze into the room. Mulder looked towards the beast and saw that the dark shape of it had stopped in the light. He heard Scully struggling through the tunnel above, and heard a scraping sound as she came closer to the hole and brought her light into the room.  
  
For just a moment Mulder could see it. A long, snakelike neck supported an oversized reptilian head that by itself was nearly as big as Mulder. Its onyx eyes stared impassively back at him, its mouth opened impossibly wide to hold a smooth black egg. It shuffled its clawed feet on the ground, and twitched its glistening wings just enough to rustle its feathers which shimmered in the light. It turned and hurried out of the room, a long, bare tail snaking out behind it as it disappeared into the darkness.  
  
The room was suddenly brightly lit, as dust and pebbles rained down from the hole above. The beam swept around the room before coming to rest close to him. He squinted up into the light, blinded by it after his time in the dark. He raised a hand to shield his eyes.  
  
"Mulder, are you ok?" Scully called down to him. He looked around at the thick bed of straw again. He was close to the center of what looked like a nest, surrounded by rocks that had fallen from above. There were two distinct impressions in the nest beside him where eggs nearly as big as himself had sat.  
  
"Mulder?"  
  
"I'm ok, Scully." He looked up. She was laying in the tunnel above, just her head peeking over the ledge where he had fallen through. "Did you see it?"  
  
"I can't see anything from up here, Mulder. The room looks empty except for you."  
  
"It was the bird-creature. The one that was carved onto the wall outside."  
  
The light flashed onto him and he squinted and turned away.  
  
"Mulder, did you hit your head? It looks like your face is bloody?" Her voice was full of concern.  
  
"Yeah, it's nothing. Scully, this is its nest. It just took its eggs and left."  
  
She flashed the light around the cave again and then returned to him. "It looks empty now. Can you climb a rope if I throw it down to you?"  
  
"I think so." He stood and stretched and looked around the cave. There must be something here he could show her that would prove he had found something. Besides the straw and rocks scattered around the cave, he found it was pretty bare.  
  
"I've anchored the rope, Mulder. Here," She dropped one end of the rope down to him. He took it and stood hesitantly at the bottom for a moment, looking around.  
  
"Come on, Mulder, just climb up here." She coached him. He looked up at the hole but couldn't see her. She must have been holding the other end of the rope. He got a grip and started pulling himself up, hesitant to leave with no evidence to prove what he'd seen.

 

Chapter 9  
\---------  
  
"Where the hell were you two? Another ten minutes and we were sending search and rescue after you." John watched with his hands on his hips and an angry look on his face as Scully helped Mulder over to the tailgate of a truck and sat him down.  
  
"We were out of radio range in the cave. We had a little accident." Scully pulled off her helmet and laid it on the bed of the truck. She went around to the cab and pulled a first aid kit from behind the passenger seat and brought it back to where Mulder was sitting and climbed up onto the truck bed next to him. She looked at the blood which had ran down the side of his face and stained his shirt, and the cuts and tears in both his shirt and pants and shook her head as she dug bandages and antiseptic from the kit.  
  
"There was something in that cave. We followed it thinking it was the missing boy, but it turned out to be the Piasa Bird, just like the one on the cliff painting." Mulder said excitedly, ignoring Scully's attempts to examine the cut on his head.  
  
"What happened in there?" John asked, directing the question to Scully.  
  
"There was a minor collapse in a tunnel he was in. He fell about thirty feet."  
  
"Is he ok?" John asked, looking at him with concern.  
  
"I'm fine," Mulder piped up. "I fell onto a bed of straw this creature was using for a nest. There were eggs there too, and the bird came back and carried them away in its jaws. We have to go back up there and find out where it went."  
  
John looked at Scully for an answer. She tipped Mulder's head back and looked into his eyes in the waning daylight.  
  
"Well," she said slowly, "he might have a slight concussion."  
  
"I don't have a concussion, Scully. You just missed seeing it by a couple seconds. It's up there in those caves."  
  
Scully nodded patiently and continued daubing away the blood on his head with a gauze pad.  
  
"Look, Agent Mulder," John began. "I know you've had a long day. Your Chicago agents already called in, and they're at the airport. They should be here in about an hour. I think you and Agent Scully should just pack up and get out of here. I'll drive you back to headquarters."  
  
"But there really is something up there. I want to go back up there and find it." He started to slide off the tailgate and stand up, but Scully caught him with a firm hand on his shoulder.  
  
"Mulder..." Scully began, but John interrupted her before she could finish her protest.  
  
"There's already been one collapse in there today, Agent Mulder. I'm not going to allow anyone else in there until some geologists come check the caves out. We already have our hands full looking for the missing boy. The last thing I want is for someone to get caught in a cave collapse. We don't have the manpower for two more rescue operations at the same time." John turned and walked away.  
  
Mulder fidgeted, trying to think of a way to convince them of what he'd seen.  
  
"Mulder, I'm a little concerned about that blow you took to your head. I'll drive. We'll go catch our flight, and then we can see about getting you to a doctor back in DC. Ok?" Scully positioned herself to try and meet his eyes, though he was looking everywhere but at her. He finally looked at her, the sincerity in his eyes obvious.  
  
"We're missing out on a great opportunity here, Scully."  
  
"I know you think we are, Mulder, but I don't know if you're seeing things as they really are."  
  
"I saw it, Scully. I touched it. I felt it." His excitement was waning, turning to frustration.  
  
She sat on the tailgate next to him. The orange sunset sent beams of light through the trees, leaving the ground dappled in puddles of color and painting the high cliff walls an impossible pink. Somewhere a raven laughed loudly, the sound echoing around the valley. She took his hand and squeezed it.  
  
"Feel this?"  
  
"Yes," he answered with a sigh, reluctantly.  
  
"This is real, Mulder. Whatever happened in the cave, in the darkness before I arrived, I don't know. But I know sensory deprivation can play strange tricks on the mind, and I know you took a pretty good hit on the head."  
  
He nodded and stretched out his hand so their fingers intertwined. He felt her skin sliding against his palm and thought about the snakeskin neck of the beast he had ran his hand over and how it had felt sliding against his skin. Had it really felt like snakeskin? Had the feathers really tickled against his face? Could he remember what it looked like for that fleeting instant he had seen it? Could he draw a picture? Now he wasn't so sure.  
  
"Are you absolutely certain of what you saw in there?"  
  
"I know what I saw, what I felt."  
  
She slid off the tailgate without letting go of his hand, and tugged gently at him. "Well, either way, it will have to wait for another time. Come on, Mulder. Let's get out of here."  
  
He slid off the tailgate and glanced back one last time at the dragon's form carved high on the wall, fading in the sunset light.  
  
  
  
Epilogue  
\--------  
  
Tom stood by the search and rescue tent, watching for the helicopter. He could hear the beating of its blades, but he couldn't see it yet. His father grabbed his arm and gave it a squeeze.  
  
"He'll be alright, boy. I remember when you were his age..." He was interrupted by the sight of the helicopter coming over the ridge. They both took a few steps towards the landing area. Eager to see it touch down. Tom and his father had been working with a search team down river when the call came in that they had found his son, Mark. They immediately headed back to the base and had been waiting for only a few minutes. Still, it seemed like hours.  
  
The helicopter set down and as soon as it was stable they slid open a door. One of the rescuers jumped out and turned back around to lift a small boy out. Tom couldn't wait any longer and ran up to meet them.  
  
"Daddy!" Mark ran to his father, who dropped to his knees to embrace him. "Grampa, you're here too?"  
  
"We've been looking for you, buddy," Tom said through his tears of relief. He pulled back and ran his hands over the boy's face. "Your Mommy's going to be so happy to see you," he pulled him close again.  
  
"Don't cry, Daddy." Mark looked slightly embarrassed.  
  
"Are you ok?" Grandpa rubbed his hand over the little boy's back, looking him over.  
  
"I'm ok."  
  
The rescuer walked past the happy reunion to where the commander was standing, watching from a respectful distance.  
  
"Good job," John said. "Is he ok? Where did you find him?"  
  
"He just walked out of one of the high caves up by the river. I don't know how he got up there. I had to rappel down and pick him off the cliff. Looks like he's fine. He had some crazy story about a giant bird taking care of him in the caves."  
  
"Giant bird?" John asked.  
  
"Giant bird, dragon, some damn thing. Kids, they got some imagination."  
  
"Yeah," John said, "some imagination." His eyes were on the child and his happy father, but his mind was suddenly far away, thinking of a painting high on a cliff wall up the river.

 

 


End file.
